Road Fan

Nothing is perfect. If that's what you expect you will continue to be disappointed. A lot of good has been accomplished in automotive safety, but there is a lot more that is needed. I have contributed and plan to continue to do that.

There's room for you guys to do some good as well. I see a lot of skeptics here with little interest in making it better or even understanding what has been achieved.

You can start to explore the basic US traffic safety stats on the NHTSA website. The information is open to the public.

Joe Bikerider

In fact my new tires showed up a couple mph faster. Whoo!

CB HI

I am pretty sure cycling was safer prior to automobiles taking over the roads. Things have gone down hill from there for cyclist.

Walking was safer before automobiles. Note how motoring has turned walkers into second class citizens with jaywalking laws.

Maelochs

Note how laws about lanes and stop signs have turned car drivers into second-class citizens, by that logic.

CB HI

That might be true if motorist and pedestrians were the same class. Motorist could be considered second-class citizens if they were only allowed to cross sidewalks into parking lots at intersections, same as walkers are limited to only crossing roads at intersections.

mr_bill

Nouns verb agreements hurt and hurts.

That would be shocking if true. (Hints, they isn’t.)

-mr. bill

KraneXL

Safer maybe? But even before automobiles there were horse pulled buggies, carriages, etc.Just imagine in a big city with legions of people streaming across the streets at random points. Driving would be a nightmare. We really need this one

CB HI

Sorry that your the only one that was unable to get the point of the post. Oh well.

CB HI

But the horses have proven to be smarter than drivers and AI cars.

JoeyBike

I will give up my guun when they pry my cold, dead....oh wait....wrong thread.

I will wear a beacon when they tranquilize me like a bear and strap it around my neck like a big orange bow-tie.

Whew!

KraneXL

Beacon smecon. Why bother with beacons when you don't even go to the bathroom without your cell phone. All the monitoring Big Brother will ever need and best of all, the bills on you.

Robert C

While I didn't read the entire thread, this did get me to look up RFID range. It is reasonable to expect that the RFID is the most likely transponder to be used for bicycles.

With that in mind, a quick search gave me these numbers:
from here

It wouldn't be hard to imagine DOT updating the reflector standard from the 1950's to a new standard that includes an RFID. However, as seen for the short excerpt, the majority of responsibility, for detection, remains on the designer of the automobile and its antenna system.

JoeyBike

Good luck tracking this. Although, they did eventually find Osama BeenHiding by burner phone tracking. I am likely less of a priority than he was. And I doubt the smartest car out there is this retro.



CREDIT: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....1Gitr99wzL.jpg

Road Fan

If this beacon thing goes ahead, there will ahve to be a standard that makes sure that beacons must be used that can be detected by cars. Not sure if RFID is what would be chosen, or what else could be acceptable.

scott967

I came across an article dealing with V2X standards, and see there is a fight brewing, at least in the US. The USDoT has an active NPRM to require light vehicle adoption of 802.11p wifi standard for V2X using part (10MHz) of 75MHz in the 5 GHz band which the DoT has control of. Apparently the cellular industry doesn't like this and instead is pushing for cell-based solution that works on 4G-LTE but is more optimized for 5G. I can see why they would push this as it would help drive adoption of 5G which is going to need a lot of gov't support. ISTM any cycle-beacon would have to work with one or the other of these systems.

scott s.
.

KraneXL

If it transmits a signal, it can be tracked.

Robert C

I is required for bicycles to have reflectors when they are sold. The requirements for a bicycle sold in the US can be found in the Code of federal regulations, Title 16, Chapter II, Subchapter C:
The car should begin slowing when it sees the ball, not the kid. That being said, I am not in disagreement, I am only pointing out that the technology exists, to add passive transponders to bicycles, today. Really, from a safety standpoint, it makes sense to have both active detection methods and transponders to serve as backups (again, that very statement starts with the assumption that self directed autos are a good idea to start with, that very position is still questionable).

Again, I am not your foe in this. I am only pointing out that is can be done. I am still not convinced that it should be done. Driving jobs employ a huge portion of the population. There are also the jobs created by driving jobs. As we dash forward, looking for any possible way to eliminate jobs, we need to work on a plan B for the people who will be directly impacted by that very loos of jobs. Living in their parents basements, or friends garage, is not a long term solution at a national level.

Yesterday, from Pew research:
Hey!, Exactly 2,000 posts!

KraneXL

A noble sentiment, but who's job is that anyway? Besides, we already have a system for that known as education.

Robert C

Clearly that isn't enough. even in this post-recovery era, we have near record numbers of working age men who are not in the workforce. This is having a continuing negative impact on the economy as aggregate demand remains weak.

This really isn't the place for discussions of economics. It creates a total thread-jack from the discussion Cyclists and Self Driving Cars. I will just end my part of this discussion by saying that the sentiments you are expressing, and all that goes with them, are sentiments that I shared in my twenties and thirties. Then in my forties I started teaching economics. This caused me to research the subject more than I ever did before.

I came to realize that the vociferous proponents of the Free-Market not only cherry pick their source authors (Hayek comes to mind) but they also cherry pick from those authors ideas. As any listener of Sean Hannity knows, Hayek was a strong proponent of the power of the free market; yet he argued that this could only function in the presence of a Universal Basic Income.

I can keep going; but, again, this forum is not the place, and this thread is not the place. Again, I admit that my mentioning the overall social impact of Self Driving Vehicles, should also be part of the equation as we consider their impact on safety was the beginning of a thread-jack. For that I apologize to the followers of this thread.

I am sure there will be more comments made about the positions that I, myself, used to hold; but I will avoid commenting on them. That silence should not bee seen as an endorsement for the positions I used to hold. I just don't see this as the place (and while I am at work definitely isn't the time).

Maelochs

Yes .... and we should reopen coal mines, carriage manufacturers, horse farms, buggy-whip factories ..... and let's bring back whaling!

Not advancing (when the tech is safer than human drivers in many situations, which so far it is proving to be and which is a pretty low bar) because we want to preserve jobs is a pretty lame way to run a society. We could be the world leader in alt-energy components, but we would rather fight over coal miners .... and never about retraining them, which is sad.

However .... I do not expect society to restructure itself or to stop advancing because I happen to have gotten hired somewhere. The government is not supposed to guarantee people jobs ... and it is supposed to create an environment where the best, safest, cleanest industries can advance.

One surgeon using a robot laproscopy machine might replace five or seven others, plus there would be loss of plane fare, cab rides, hotel stays as those handful of specialized surgeons tried to see patients ... but that one surgeon can treat more patients in a day than he could in a week before the advent of the machine. Tell the people who couldn't get surgery how bad it is is that some cab driver lost revenue.

For that matter, tell Uber to shut down because it is hurting cab drivers.

The government, likewise, is not obligated to provide retraining. Nice if it could ... but i'd rather see schools teach kids better, and let the adults attend community college vocational programs.

In an ideal world, the government wouldn't be wasting money on BS and would have plenty to retrain displaced workers .... and in an ideal world the government wouldn't be robbing the social security trust fund for pork-barrel projects, cheating the workers and employees who paid into it their entire working lives.

If AVs put cab drivers and bus drivers out of work .... and save say, 30,000 of the 37,0000 killed on the highways each year .... pretty good trade, i think.

himespau 

My only problem with that is that, right now, AVs are killing more people per mile traveled than traditional cars.

Maelochs

yeah, except we both know what BS that comparison is right now.

Post stuff like that with a smiley face, right?

jefnvk

Man, I missed all the AV fun last week laid up sick.

First off, I have a hard time listening to anything coming out of a person's mouth who believes we all may be microchipped in twenty years time. In twenty years time, it is simply far more likely these systems have matured to a much better than human level, than needing beacons to detect.

Now, if we ever get to the point of a smart grid, where computers are optimizing traffic flows around an urban environment in conjunction with AVs, it is ridiculous to think that all road users won't need equipment like ADS-B. That won't be for cyclist safety, though, it will be to know and understand what is going on.

Secondly,

I have. I'd say its about 80/20 detection v not, but it really isn't an analogous system. A fixed detector pointed exactly where it needs to be is different than a dynamic platform.

It has it, but as Road Fan mentioned, it is still being refined. Even when dealing with automobiles, it is not perfect. Much better than a distracted driver, for sure, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't punted a few blow up target cars testing prototype systems.

OEMs are very careful in how they market their systems. None will guarantee that you avoid collision, they all have some version of "collision mitigation" or "driver assist" or such.

himespau 

Sample size is small and I do expect it to get better, but I don't know for a fact that it will and I'm not sure I'd appreciate being an unpaid, unwitting safety beta tester if I were a cyclist or pedestrian living in one of these communities.

Rollfast

Bacon, not beacon and I keep the cordless away from the toilet as it is, no cellphones, they are easy to lose or break and if I take any gizmo with me it's a small radio. I'm not on the phone, it's in case I have a medical problem or get a call, and I'm not going to be operating it while engaged, to be blunt.


Why are we going off the road here with that?


And why are we being trolled by some dude you never heard of and you might not it might not even be credible?